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[2]

Now Calliope bore to Oeagrus or, nominally, to Apollo, a son Linus,1 whom
Hercules slew; and another son, Orpheus,2 who
practised minstrelsy and by his songs moved stones and trees. And when his wife Eurydice
died, bitten by a snake, he went down to Hades, being fain to bring her up,3 and he persuaded
Pluto to send her up. The god promised to do so, if on the way Orpheus would
not turn round until he should be come to his own house. But he disobeyed and turning
round beheld his wife; so she turned back. Orpheus also invented the mysteries of
Dionysus,4 and having been torn in pieces by the
Maenads5 he is buried in Pieria.

1 Accounts differ as to the parentage of Linus. According to one, he was a son
of Apollo by the Muse Urania （Hyginus, Fab. 161）;
according to another, he was a son of Apollo by Psamathe, daughter of Crotopus
（Paus. 2.19.8）; according to another,
he was a son of Apollo by Aethusa, daughter of Poseidon （Contest
314 according to another, he was a son of Magnes by the Muse Clio
（Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 831）.

2 That Orpheus was a son of Oeagrus by the Muse Calliope is
affirmed also by Ap. Rhod., Argon. i.23ff.; Conon 45;
Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 831; the author of Contest
314; Hyginus, Fab. 14; and Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini.
ed. G. H. Bode, i. pp. 26, 90 （First and Second Vatican
Mythographers）. The same view was held by Asclepiades, but some said
that his mother was the Muse Polymnia （Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon.
i.23）. Pausanias roundly denied that the musician's mother was the
Muse Calliope （Paus. 9.30.4）. That his
father was Oeagrus is mentioned also by Plat. Sym.179d,
Diod. 4.25.2, and Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. 7, p. 63, ed.
Potter. As to the power of Orpheus to move stones and trees by his singing, see
Eur. Ba. 561ff.; Ap. Rhod., Argon. i.26ff.;
Diod. 4.25.2; Eratosthenes, Cat. 24; Conon 45;
Hor. Carm. 1.12.7ff.; Seneca, Herakles
Oetaeus 1036ff.; Seneca, Herakles Furens 572ff.

4 On Orpheus as a founder of mysteries, compare
Eur. Rh. 943ff.; Arist.
Frogs 1032; Plat. Prot. 369d; Plat. Rep. 2.365e-366a; Dem. 25.11;
Diod. 1.23, Diod. 1.96.2-6, Diod. 3.65.6,
Diod. 4.25.3, Diod. 5.77.3; Paus.
2.30.2, Paus. 9.30.4, Paus. 10.7.2; Plut. Frag. 84 （Plutarch, Didot ed., v. p.
55）. According to Diod. 1.23, the mysteries of Dionysus
which Orpheus instituted in Greece were copied
by him from the Egyptian mysteries of Osiris. The view that the mysteries of Dionysus
were based on those of Osiris has been maintained in recent years by the very able and
learned French scholar, Monsieur Paul Foucart. See his treatise, Le culte
de Dionysos en Attique （Paris, 1904）, pp. 8ff.;
Foucart, Les mystères d' Eleusis （Paris,
1914）, pp. 1ff., 445ff.

5 As to the death of Orpheus at the hands of the
Maenads or the Thracian women, see Paus. 9.30.5;
Conon 45; Eratosthenes, Cat. 24; Verg. G. 4.520ff.; Ov. Met. 11.1ff. Usually the
women are said to have been offended by the widower's constancy to the memory of his
late wife, and by his indifference to their charms and endearments. But Eratosthenes, or
rather the writer who took that name, puts a different complexion on the story. He says
that Orpheus did not honour Dionysus, but esteemed the sun the greatest of the gods, and
used to rise very early every day in order to see the sunrise from the top of Mount
Pangaeum. This angered Dionysus, and he stirred up the Bassarids or Bacchanals to rend
the bard limb from limb. Aeschylus wrote a tragedy on the subject called the Bassarids
or Bassarae. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), （Leipsig, 1889）, pp.
9ff.

Apollodorus. Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Includes Frazer's notes.

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